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Latest News
Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
Jonathan I. Katz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 1 | October 2024 | Pages S120-S167
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2260017
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The first calculation of energy exchange between electrons and the radiation field by inverse Compton and Compton recoil was reported by Hurwitz in Los Alamos Reports LA-301 (1945) and LA-553 (1946). These reports have not been generally known; even in 1950, Bethe called attention to their neglect. Yet, they predated Kompaneets’s widely cited 1957 paper and original 1950 report. “Comptonization” is important in many astronomical objects as well as in fusion energy. I make a very brief comparison with Kompaneets’s work and present Hurwitz’s reports as appendixes.